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"And the missionaries, they tell us we will be left behind. / Been left behind a thousand times, a thousand times." -- Arcade Fire

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Incapable of doubt, incapable of faith

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith. -- T.S. Eliot, Introduction (1931), Pascal's "Pensees"

Problem or Mystery?

A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity. -- Gabriel Marcel

On the birthday of the world I begin to contemplate what I have done and left undone, but this year not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding friendships, digging out stumps of old resentments that refuse to rot on their own. No, this year I want to call myself to task for what I have done and not done for peace. How much ha […]

[Revised entry by Sharon Crasnow, Alison Wylie, Wenda K. Bauchspies, and Elizabeth Potter on March 31, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Feminists have a number of distinct interests in, and perspectives on, science. The tools of science have been a crucial resource for understanding the nature, impact, and prospects for changing gender-based forms […]

[Revised entry by Richard Arneson on March 25, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Equality of opportunity is a political ideal that is opposed to caste hierarchy but not to hierarchy per se. The background assumption is that a society contains a hierarchy of more and less desirable, superior and inferior positions. Or there may be several such hierar […]

[Revised entry by Eric Schwitzgebel on March 24, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term "belief" to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflectin […]

Yablo Paradox (draft: do not quote this article) (Formatter: Insert paragraphs for summary here.) The Yablo Paradox implies there is no way to coherently assign a truth value to any of the sentences in the countably infinite sequence of sentences of the form, ``None of the subsequent sentences are true.'' Specifically, the Yablo paradox arises when […]

David Hume: Imagination David Hume (1711–1776) approaches questions in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics via questions about our minds. For example, before addressing the epistemological question of whether we have any justification for our beliefs about unobserved states of affairs, Hume asks which of our cognitive faculties is responsible fo […]

John Anderson (1893-1962) Scottish-Australian philosopher John Anderson was a passionate defender of a philosophy typically described as Realism. Anderson exercised a significant and lasting influence over several generations of students, including such later philosophers as John Passmore, J.L. Mackie, and D.M. Armstrong. These students criticised and develo […]

In the Journal of Personality, a new study reports on the uniformity of human experience around the globe: The World at 7: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries The research was an online survey of a total of 5447 people. Each participant was asked to think about what happened the previous evening at 7 pm. Then they were asked to describ […]

Over at Bloggingheads.tv, I've been interviewed by John Horgan, science journalist and author of books such as The Undiscovered Mind. We talked about whether neuroscience will be able to help diagnose mental illness; why we need to reform how science is published; the mess that is the Human Brain Project; and on a more personal note, about why I became […]

Francis Collins, BioLogos founder and current director of the National Institutes of Health, was profiled in the latest issue of National Geographic magazine. The profile, titled “Man of Science—and Faith”, included a short interview with Collins about how his faith impacts his scientific work, and his belief in the harmony between science and Christian fait […]

Classical Christian orthodoxy as expressed in the Creeds begins at the beginning: nature owes its existence to and is sustained by Jesus Christ. One implication is that the best way of finding out about nature is to look at nature.

CUT OFF FROM THE ‘REAL’ BY AN ATMOSPHERIC BUBBLE OF COINTELPRO PROPAGANDA AN PAMPHLETS CREATED BY THE HOOVER ADMINISTRATION, IT’S A LAND WHERE REPARATIONS ARE TAKEN AS THEY ARE LIVED. ITS MUSES AND MEDIUMS AMONG US ARE ‘URBAN’ WOMEN IN SPORTS BRAS, BOXER SHORTS, AND LOW SLUNG CAMO PANTS IN MILITARY AND ATHLETIC SHOEWEAR. THE

Liturgy For The People

The liturgy is essentially not the religion of the cultured, but the religion of the people. If the people are rightly instructed, and the liturgy is properly carried out, they display a simple and profound understanding of it. For the people do not analyze concepts, but contemplate. The people possess that inner integrity of being which corresponds perfectly with the symbolism of the liturgical language, imagery, action and ornaments. The cultured man has first of all to accustom himself to this attitude; but to the people it has always been inconceivable that religion should express itself by abstract ideas and logical developments, and not by being and action, by imagery and ritual. --Romano Guardini, "The Awakening of the Church in the Soul"

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The Anguished Question

If you really enquire about God, not with mere curiosity, not, as it were, like a spiritual stamp collector, but as an anxious seeker, distressed in heart, anguished by the possibility that God might not exist and hence all life be vanity and one great madness -- if you ask in such a mood as the man who asks the doctor, "Tell me, will my wife live or will she die?"-- if you ask thus about God, then you know already that God exists; the anguished question bears witness that you know.
-- Emil Brunner, "Our Faith"